The present invention relates to a medium recording/reproducing apparatus and a medium management method, and it relates, in particular, to a method for enabling display/notice of a remaining number of times that can be executed in editing works, such as, addition, movement, deletion, etc., of data, on a medium of postscript (e.g., write-once) type.
In case when tying to reproduce a medium by another equipment, after recording television program and/or data of personal photographing on that medium, for example, in particular, a DVD-R (Digital Versatile Disc-Recordable), representatively, there are very many cases where reproduction can be made unless so-called a “Finalize” process has been conducted thereon, which will not allow the postscript (i.e., addition) of data thereon. However, if conducting that Finalize process, once, since it is impossible to conduct the editing works, such as, addition, movement, and deletion, etc., of data, it is difficult to keep the consistency between both the compatibility with other equipments and the editing works of data.
Nevertheless, since recording/reproducing can be made on a BD-R (Blu-ray Disc-Recordable), which appears on the markets in recent years, by an equipment other than the apparatus having conducted the recording, even before conducting the Finalize process, therefore it is possible to conduct the editing works, such as, the addition, the movement, and the deletion, etc., of data, while keeping the compatibility with the other equipments. This is because of the recording/reproducing method, being called “POW (Pseudo-Overwrite)”, for enabling recording/reproducing on the medium, like a medium of rewritable type, irrespective of the fact, i.e., the medium of postscript (i.e., write-once) type.
However, a problem generated when trying to conduct the editing works on the medium of postscript (write-once) type lies in that a remaining capacity of the medium comes to be less if continuing the editing works thereon, but differing from the medium of re-writable type, and therefore, there is a possibility that the editing works cannot be done, suddenly. For the purpose of preventing from this, there is already known a method of noticing or displaying a possible number of times of editions to a user, by estimating disposition information necessary for the editing works while observing the remaining capacity of the medium. This is described in the following Patent Document 1.    [Patent Document 1] Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 2006-216163 (2001)